Arthur Wilson Milam - - - January 13, 1927

I always thought he was going to be an engineer. Back in our youth, when the daily Florida deluge came down - - - thunder, lightning, hot sticky rain - - - the blue driveway in front of the house at 1894 Edgewood would promptly fill to overflowing. Which was enough to fill the heart of someone like me, at age ten or so. I would take the huge black umbrella out of its stand next to the front door ("Born in Baltimore, Raised Everywhere" was its motto), and go out to wade back and forth in the warm waters that came up to my ankles.

When Arthur came home from school and saw the flood, his reaction was slightly different than mine. He decided that we needed to tame this northern branch of Lake Okeechobee, so he set to work with scrap wood borrowed from the workshop, and with string and hinges, levers and pulleys, he built an elaborate water control system at the edge of the lake equal to anything, I am sure, ever constructed by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

I could, by pulling a string here and raising a lock there, either make the entire lake disappear; or, if I chose, double in size. This operating machinery for control of Laguna Milam made me sure that he was destined one day to be a world-famous engineer.

He and his friend Jack Balfe constructed a series of elaborate wooden wagons, almost as tall as a real, car, built to go about on sturdy cast-iron wheels, pushed by us.

We'd take one three blocks up Edgewood Avenue to St. Johns, turn it around, and let gravity roll it down to the park at the very bottom. Not only did it have steering wheel and bumpers and wooden hand-brake, it was designed for night driving. They had taken four empty tomato cans, nailed them sideways front and back, stuck candles in them (clear cellophane for the front lights, red for the back) and after dark, we'd light them up and go thundering down Edgewood at a full 20 mph, alarming the gentry and giving joyous chase to the local dogs.

When we damn near smashed into Ms. Goodrich's 1940 Dodge coming uphill, our north Florida automotive plant had to be laid to rest.

§ § §

For a while there, Arthur played guitar, a Gibson, unamplified (what's that?). He consented to teach me some songs from the John Jacob Niles songbook - - - "Wayfaring Stranger," "Goodnight Irene," "Uncle Reuben" - - - plus Gershwin's "Summertime." His was a rich and sweet tenor.

He also dug up a lurid version of the song "Lydia Pinkham" which I promptly learned by heart:

Mrs. Rich she had a problem
Couldn't hardly take a pee
So she drank she drank she drank some Lydia Pinkham's
Now they pipes her to the sea.

So we drink we drink to Lydia Pinkham
Savior of the human race
She invented a vegetable compound
Filled us all with such good grace.
Now Mrs. Wright she had a problem,
Couldn't satisfy at all
So she drank she drank she drank some Lydia Pinkham's
Now she takes them balls and all.

So we drink we drink to Lydia Pinkham
Savior of the human race
She invented a vegetable compound
Filled us all with such good grace.

§ § §

I remember when I was sixteen and he had just returned from two years in the Navy. He came home one night from some champagne party at the Florida Yacht Club. I was awake, listening to my bedside Philco radio, which I did most nights so I could sleep through my classes at John Gorrie Junior High the next day.

Arthur came in, stretched out on the vacant cot across the room, and we talked for a while, as we were wont to do, and he seemed to drift off . . . until I asked his thoughts on some project I had in mind. He woke up for a moment, sat up, and intoned a piece of advice which I took as sage wisdom, one I have followed throughout my life: "Feel free," he said, "feel free to do anything you feel free to do."

He managed at all times with me to be strong but non-judgmental. When I did something scabrous - - - for instance, publishing one of my more indelicate books - - - instead of saying "Jesus, Lorenzo, haven't you done enough damage with all your self-indulgent writings?" he would merely say "Well, it's not the book I would have written."

It was this gentle understatement, his ability to forgive and forget ("It's like water off a duck's back" he would always say) that still looms large in my mind (and in my heart).